Post-1990 Documentary

Reconfiguring Independence

Camille Deprez, Judith Pernin

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780748694143
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This book questions the meanings of 'independence' for documentaries made in the post-1990 context, a period of unrivalled disruption and creativity in the field. Based upon a reasoned selection of contributions, it is the first collection of in-depth case studies cutting across formats, media, subject matters, purposes and national divides. Writing from a wide range of academic perspectives, the contributors shed new light on historical, theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the independent documentary, in order to better comprehend the radical transformations of the form over the past twenty-five years. Compared to existing studies, this volume focuses on works and practitioners existing at the margins of the traditional media, the mainstream film industry and the prevailing economic and socio-political systems; yet greatly contributing to changing our perception of documentaries. And in doing so, it addresses an important gap in the global understanding of documentary practices and styles.

Table of contents

• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I History and Spaces of Resistance
• Chapter 1 Post-unification (East) German Documentary and the Contradictions of Identity
• Chapter 2 No Going Back: Continuity and Change in Australian Documentary
• Chapter 3 A Space in Between: The Legacy of the Activist Documentary Film in India
• Chapter 4 Languages, Speech and Voice: The Heritage of Jean Rouch and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Convention: Black Wall/White Holes
• Chapter 5 Chris Marker: Interactive Screen and Memory
• PART II The Personal Experience
• Chapter 6 The Survivor-Perpetrator Encounter and the Truth Archive in Rithy Panh’s Documentaries
• Chapter 7 Contesting Consensual Memory: The Work of Remembering in Chilean Autobiographical Documentaries
• Chapter 8 ‘We All Invented Our Own Algeria’:1 Habiba Djahnine’s Letter to My Sister as Memory-Narrative
• Chapter 9 From the Ashes: The Fall of Apartheid and the Rise of the Lone Documentary Filmmaker in South Africa
• Chapter 10 A Personal Vision of the Hong Kong Cityscape in Anson Mak’s Essayistic Documentary Films One Way Street on a Turntable and On the Edge of a Floating City, We Sing
• PART III Displacement, Participation and Spectatorship
• Chapter 11 Documentary Filmmakers on the Circuit: A Festival Career from Czech Dream to Czech Peace
• Chapter 12 Material Traces of Lebanon: A Documentary Aesthetics of Feeling in the Art Gallery
• Chapter 13 Autonomous Navigation? Multiplicity and Self-reflexive Aesthetics in Sergio Basso’s Documentary Film Giallo a Milano and Web Documentary Made in Chinatown
• Chapter 14 Fukushima and the Shifting Conventions of Documentary: From Broadcast to Social Media Netizenship
• Chapter 15 Independent Documentaries and Online Uses in China: From Cinephilia to Activism
• Conclusion
• Notes on the Contributors
• Index